This Time Around, Son Helps Dad Get a Victory

Bad news in baseball is an ace pitcher with a sore arm, a press release with the words “inflamed left elbow” and “possible multiple loose bodies” in the same sentence, a manager lowering his voice and somberly informing the media that his team will have to press on without Mark Langston.

Bad news in baseball is a foul tip when compared to what happens in the outside world, when a baby boy is stricken with a terminal muscular disease, dies before his first birthday and leaves behind heartbroken parents who cry out in the night for answers because they refuse to accept “It’s God’s plan” or “Life isn’t fair.”

Mark Leiter pitched six innings Saturday afternoon and watched three more on the clubhouse TV without knowing that Mark Langston, now his Angel teammate, had been placed on the disabled list, probably headed for surgery. “I’m thinking, ‘This is a big win, we’re back over .500 playing on the road and we’ve got Langston going tomorrow,’ ” Leiter said.

“Then the trainer says, ‘No, he isn’t, he’s on the DL.’ I didn’t even know.

“Where have I been?”

The rest of us can only imagine.

Four days after attending a memorial service for his 9-month-old son Ryan, who died of a child’s form of “Lou Gehrig’s disease,” Leiter pitched for the Angels against the Milwaukee Brewers.

How he was able to do this, even his teammates couldn’t fathom. From a distance, they watched, slack-jawed, as Leiter went about his pregame routine as if it were just another day--loosening up, then jogging out to the mound, then battling the Brewer hitters to a near-standoff for six nerve-frazzling innings.

Leiter kept the Angels close enough to win--which they did with a late-inning rally, 6-4--despite carrying a load heavier than a hundred disabled lists.

And later he apologizes for being out of touch with the up-to-the-minute news.

“His mental capacity must be stronger than most of ours,” said Chuck Finley, also an Angel pitcher, also a father with a young child. “I can’t even begin to imagine what that’s like, watching something like that happen right in front of your eyes. And then be able to concentrate well enough to start and pitch a game.

“I guess when you go through something like that, it makes all of this seem like a back-yard game of marbles.”

Pitching this game was a form of therapy, Leiter claimed. “I’m lucky,” he said. “Much luckier than my wife. I have times like today where, for a few innings, I do have something to occupy my mind.”

But to pitch this game without a moment’s thought of Ryan was “impossible,” Leiter said. As he warmed up in the bullpen, Leiter was ambushed by a sudden rush of second thoughts and second-guessing.

“I was feeling guilty in the bullpen,” Leiter said. “I thinking, ‘What am I doing? Is it too soon? Is it right?’ ”

Here Leiter was, getting ready to play a child’s game, a game Ryan never had the opportunity to play, and he’s getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to do it. Leiter has another son, Mark Jr., who is 3, and was in the stands Saturday because he loves baseball and loves watching Dad play catch.

Why, Leiter wanted to know, could Mark Jr. be there but not Ryan?

“Why should I be so fortunate?” Leiter scolded himself. “Why do so many have it so good in life while others have it so difficult?”

The fog didn’t lift until Leiter abruptly turned and fired the baseball he was holding against a wall in the bullpen.

“I was mad at myself for the way I was feeling,” he said. “I had to realize I had work to do, that I had to focus on baseball. But you can’t control what enters your mind.”

So Leiter gave baseball his partially divided attention for a couple of hours, which, quite frankly, is more than baseball had given him in the last month.

Leiter was here, clad in an Angel uniform, only because the Detroit Tigers released him three weeks ago. Repeat: The Detroit Tigers, with full knowledge of Ryan’s condition and the day-to-day crisis confronting the Leiter family, fired the breadwinner of the family.

“They told me they wanted to see some new faces,” Leiter said, each word dropping like an anvil.

Some business, baseball.

America’s Game.

“If I was pitching rotten, throwing only 82 or 83 (miles per hour), I’d have said, ‘Well, I deserve to get released,’ ” Leiter said. “But I was throwing 90, 91. Throwing hard, throwing good. I’m healthy. Why are they getting rid of me?

“I have to admit I do wonder.”

Anyone would have to wonder. Had the recent media attention given Ryan Leiter become a “distraction” to the Tigers in their all-consuming quest of the American League wild card? Winning is everything, don’t you know? And besides, it wasn’t as if the Tigers were waiving Mickey Lolich or anything. Leiter was 6-6 last year. To the Tigers, he was just a replaceable part.

No great altruistic spirit moved the Angels to pick up Leiter. The Angels had a hole in their rotation, pure and simple, and figured Leiter might be able to fill it.

Yet, since his arrival, Leiter says, “the Angels have been so kind to us, my wife and I have been almost uncomfortable with it. Anything we’ve needed, they’ve been there for us. It’s such a good feeling. We’ve never been killed with kindness like that before.”

Saturday, Leiter attempted to pay back the debt. Beyond that, he was just trying to get through the day. For Leiter, there would be no Win One For Ryan melodrama, no cheap made-for-TV moment.

“I’m not going to be a freak about it,” Leiter said. “I’m not going to put his name on my jersey or wear a black band . . . I wasn’t going to dedicate the game to Ryan. Ryan is the son I lost. There isn’t a win or a no-hitter or a perfect game or a World Series championship that can make up for that. Nothing can replace my son.”

If anything, Leiter said, Ryan helped win one for Dad.

“Ryan battled every day of his 9 1/2 months on this planet,” Leiter said. “I’m strong and I’m healthy. He fought for every breath. He never quit.

“If he can handle that, I ought to be able to deal with a baseball game.”

Somehow, Leiter suspects, the Angels will be able to cope with Mark Langston on the 15-day disabled list.